This allegation has tarnished the chief minister's business-friendly ceo image. Says fapcci president Lakshminarayan Sharma: 'Naidu might have created the right environment to ensure investment. But his emphasis so far is only on IT. That too, at the cost of other industries, which also bring investment into the state.'
fapi president B.V. Rama Rao has even threatened a fast unto death if the government fails to roll back the January 1 hike on power tariff. He charges Naidu with misleading the people with the claim that the hike would only affect six to seven lakh of the one crore consumers. 'The small units cannot withstand the hike.'
More trouble lurks from the Congress. Reddy charges the CM with having amassed assets worth Rs 56 crore, disproportionate to his sources of income. He lists the properties owned by Naidu and his family members, and family-owned concerns:
Reddy contrasts this with an affidavit filed by Naidu in June 1988 before an Andhra Pradesh court, where he declared his annual income was Rs 36,000 per annum. Naidu's wife allegedly disclosed 357 grams of gold jewellery, eight kilograms of silver and Rs 49,000 in cash under the vdi scheme for the years 1982-83 to 1985-86. Zonal regulations and rules were also allegedly violated in the buildings owned by her. Claims Reddy: 'Naidu is using the company (Heritage) to convert black money. Heritage Foods earned a whopping Rs 4.5 crore profit this year, while the dairy industry in the country suffered for the third consecutive year.'
'It is only the tip of the ice-berg,' says Reddy, who promises more revelations on issues of maladministration, violation of human rights and general misdemeanours of the administration. The Congress' gameplan is to push Naidu on the backfoot. 'Either refute the allegations or face legal consequences,' warns Reddy.
Clearly, the chief minister is worried. The Congress had earlier dragged NTR to court, and Naidu's worry is that the same may happen to him. In an interim order, the Andhra Pradesh high court had found NTR guilty in seven out of the 101 graft charges lodged by senior Congress leader Dronamraju Satyanarayana in 1987-88. This had its impact: NTR lost from Kalwakurthy in Mehboobnagar in the 1989 poll, and the tdp was defeated at the hands of the Congress, headed by M. Chenna Reddy.
Naidu has dismissed the Congress allegations as an effort to malign him. 'Should I be answering all such baseless allegations? Tomorrow they may accuse me of owning Charminar, the Golconda and the Hussainsagar lake.' Rajasekhara Reddy, Naidu asserted, is himself facing several criminal cases. Counters Reddy: 'If that is the case, why is the government not initiating action against me?' He claims a majority of the cases pending against him are only poll-related.
The mood of Congress is upbeat. The party feels it's won the battle of the ballot even before it began. Some disgruntled bureaucrats are said to have helped Congress gather clinching documentary evidence. And with the entire Opposition after him-including brother-in-law Nandamuri Harikrishna, whose breakaway Anna Telugu Desam has been attracting unprecedented crowds at all his meetings-can Naidu manage to wriggle out of the mess he is in?
